The High Priestess’ Game – Chapter 14 (last Chapter)
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Chapter 14
The interrogation room smelled of disinfectant and old coffee, a combination that turned my stomach as I sat on the cold metal chair. My fingers traced invisible patterns on the scarred table while Detective Johnson’s gaze bore into me like a drill searching for weakness. Three hours had passed since they’d brought me in—three hours of the same questions circling like vultures. The fluorescent lights overhead buzzed with a persistent hum that seemed to bore directly into my skull, and I fought the urge to close my eyes against their merciless glare.
“Let’s go through this again, Ms. Vega.” Detective Johnson’s voice had the texture of gravel underfoot. He was a man carved from stone—hard angles, weathered face, the kind of eyes that had seen too much and forgiven too little. The folder beneath his splayed fingers looked thin, but I knew its contents carried the weight of a dead man.
Beside him sat another officer, younger, with a perpetual half-frown that seemed more habitual than intentional. His pen scratched against his notepad like a mouse behind drywall—persistent, irritating, hidden from view.
“I’ve told you everything already.” My voice sounded hollow, even to my own ears. My throat ached from repetition.
Johnson leaned forward, his chair creaking in protest. “You led us directly to a body that’s been missing for months. A body buried beneath a trapdoor in an abandoned casino that’s been closed for years. A place that doesn’t appear in any of our records. Care to explain that?”
I felt something brush against my consciousness—Grandpa’s presence, a gentle warning to be careful. I’d learned young that revealing too much about my abilities often led to more trouble than silence.
“I had a vision.” The words hung between us, as substantial as smoke and just as likely to disappear under scrutiny.
The younger officer snorted, but Johnson’s expression didn’t change. Instead, he reached into his jacket pocket and placed a small USB drive on the table between us. The sight of it sent a chill through me that had nothing to do with the room’s temperature.
“John Stevens confessed twenty minutes ago,” Johnson said, tapping the drive with his index finger. “Said he killed his brother out of jealousy over some gambling winnings. But here’s the interesting part—he claims you knew details only the killer would know. Says you described exactly how Mark was killed, right down to the broken watch on his wrist.”
I swallowed, my mouth suddenly desert-dry.
“You’re lucky he confessed,” Johnson continued, his voice deceptively soft. “Otherwise, you’d be our prime suspect. Now explain how you know these details.”
The younger officer looked up, pen poised. “Maybe she helped him do it.”
I curled my fingers into my palms until I felt my nails bite into the flesh. “I didn’t help anyone kill anyone.”
“Then how did you know?” Johnson’s voice rose slightly, the first crack in his professional demeanor. “How did you know about the watch? About the trapdoor? About the specific injury to the back of his head?”
I closed my eyes briefly, feeling the weight of their stares. When I opened them again, I reached for the worn notebook in my bag. Johnson tensed, but relaxed when he saw what I was holding.
“What’s that?” he asked.
“My readings,” I said, opening the notebook to a page filled with my handwriting, symbols and notes scattered across the paper. “I record my visions.”
Johnson exhaled slowly through his nose. “Ms. Vega, we don’t have time for this metaphysical nonsense.”
I looked up at him then, really looked. Behind the shield of his badge and the fortress of his skepticism, I saw flashes—a child’s drawing pinned to a refrigerator, a half-empty bottle of heartburn medication in his desk drawer, a wedding ring removed for the third time this year.
“Your daughter drew you a picture last week,” I said quietly. “A lighthouse on a cliff. You told her it was beautiful, but you haven’t had time to hang it up yet. It’s in your middle desk drawer at home, beneath some bills you’re avoiding.”
Johnson went still, the kind of stillness that comes before violence.
The younger officer’s pen stopped scratching.
“Your medication isn’t working,” I continued, unable to stop now that I’d started. “The heartburn. You should see a different doctor. The one you’re seeing now misdiagnosed your brother last year, and you haven’t forgiven him for it.”
“That’s enough,” Johnson snapped, but I could see the color draining from his face.
I turned to the younger officer. “The woman who works at the coffee stand in the lobby—the one with the blue streak in her hair—she writes your name with a heart on your cup when you’re not looking.”
The pen dropped from his fingers.
The room fell into silence so complete I could hear the hum of the building’s ventilation system, the distant ring of a phone at the front desk, the shallow breathing of both men.
“How did you—” the younger officer started, but Johnson cut him off with a gesture.
“What happened at the café?” Johnson asked, his voice carefully controlled. “Before John ran. Before you called 911.”
I exhaled slowly, gathering the threads of memory. “I met him for a tarot reading. I told him I had information about Sarah, his brother’s wife. It was a lie to get him there.” My hands trembled slightly, and I clasped them together on the table. “I laid out the cards, but I wasn’t reading them—not really. I was watching his face. When The Tower appeared—the card of sudden destruction—I told him I could feel his brother’s presence. That Mark was showing me how he died.”
“And he believed you?” the younger officer asked, having recovered some of his composure.
“People believe what scares them,” I said simply. “I described the way John’s hands felt around Mark’s throat, the sound Mark’s head made when it hit the concrete floor, the weight of the body as John dragged it through the abandoned casino. I described the moment John took Mark’s winnings from his pocket, the way the money felt warm from being pressed against his dead brother’s body.”
Johnson’s jaw worked beneath his skin. “And how exactly did you know all that?”
Behind him, I saw Mister B. materialize, his broad shoulders tensed in warning. “Don’t show all your cards, Rahel,” he muttered, though only I could hear him.
“The same way I know that you have a scar on your left shoulder from a fishing accident when you were twelve,” I said to Johnson. “The same way I know that you—” I nodded to the younger officer, “—still sleep with a nightlight because of what you saw in that house on Marlowe Street last year during the domestic call that went bad.”
The younger officer pushed his chair back, the legs screeching against the floor. “This is bullshit,” he said, but his voice cracked.
“Is it?” I asked. “Ask me something only you would know. Something that isn’t in any file.”
Johnson stared at me for a long moment, his eyes narrowed to slits. Then, very quietly, he asked, “What was my mother’s last word before she died?”
Mister B. placed his hand on my shoulder, and suddenly I saw an elderly woman in a hospital bed, her face gaunt but her eyes bright. Her lips moved, forming a single word.
“Forgiveness,” I whispered.
Johnson’s face went slack with shock before hardening again. “Lucky guess.”
“There’s no such thing as luck,” I said. “Just like there’s no such thing as coincidence. I found Mark’s body because he wanted to be found. I confronted John because Mark’s spirit led me to him.”
The younger officer had backed himself against the wall now, watching me with undisguised unease. “Detective, I think we should—”
“What happened after John ran from the café?” Johnson interrupted, his voice steady despite the pallor of his face.
I closed my notebook, the leather cover worn smooth from years of handling. “I called 911, just like I told you. I waited outside until I saw the police cars arrive. I saw them catch John three blocks away. Then more officers came and brought me here.”
“And you expect us to believe you knew all these details about Mark’s murder because of… what? Psychic visions?” Johnson’s skepticism had returned, but there was something else beneath it now—a crack in his certainty.
“I don’t expect you to believe anything,” I said. “I just know what I saw. What I felt.” I looked down at my hands, remembering the cold touch of Mark’s spirit the night I’d had the vision that led me to his body. “Dead men tell tales if you know how to listen.”
Johnson gathered the papers in front of him, squaring them with mechanical precision. “John Stevens claims you knew things only the killer would know. He says that’s why he ran—because you scared him. Made him think his brother’s ghost was haunting him.”
“Maybe it was,” I said.
“People don’t believe in ghosts, Ms. Vega. Not in my line of work.”
I met his gaze then. “What people believe doesn’t change what’s true.”
The conversation lapsed into silence. Johnson flipped through the file again, though I suspected he wasn’t really reading it. The younger officer had returned to his seat but kept glancing at me when he thought I wasn’t looking.
My fingers found the edge of my notebook again, tracing the worn binding. Inside were years of visions, dreams, messages from those who had crossed over. Most people didn’t understand. Most people thought I was either a fraud or insane. But occasionally, someone like Mark reached through the veil with enough force to make the physical world tremble, and then even the skeptics faltered.
“You found a murderer we couldn’t,” Johnson finally said. “You led us to a body we might never have discovered.” He closed the file. “But I don’t like the methods. I don’t like civilians inserting themselves into police investigations, regardless of how they came by their information.”
I nodded, understanding the unspoken warning.
“If we find any evidence—any at all—that you were involved in Mark Steven’s death beyond what you’ve told us, this conversation will go very differently.” His eyes were hard again, the momentary crack sealed over.
“I understand,” I said.
Johnson looked at me for a moment longer, as if trying to see beneath my skin to the truth he suspected lay hidden there. Then he sighed, a sound heavy with exhaustion and resignation.
“We’ll need your statement typed up and signed,” he said. “Then we’ll see about getting you out of here.”
As he stood to leave, I felt the weight of the evening settle around my shoulders like a shroud. The case was solved, a murderer caught, a body found. But the heaviness in my chest told me this wasn’t an ending—just a pause between chapters in a story I was only beginning to understand.
The door to the interrogation room swung open with the decisive click of authority. A police sergeant stood in the threshold, his uniform pressed to perfection, his face a study in professional indifference. He didn’t speak, just nodded at me, then at Detective Johnson—a silent communication that passed over my head like birds migrating between foreign territories. I gathered my scattered papers with trembling fingers, each sheet bearing the weight of revelations that had left the room’s air dense and charged, like the atmosphere before lightning strikes.
“That’ll be all for tonight, Ms. Vega.” Detective Johnson’s voice had lost its edge, replaced by something almost like exhaustion. He exchanged a glance with his younger colleague, who was still maintaining a careful distance from me. “The sergeant will process your release.”
I slid my papers back into my notebook, meticulously aligning the edges. My hands performed this familiar ritual while my mind floated somewhere near the ceiling, observing the scene with detached curiosity. Five hours in this room had left me hollowed out, as if the fluorescent lights had slowly bleached away my insides.
“So I’m free to go?” My voice sounded strange in my ears—too high, too thin.
Johnson nodded, but his eyes remained cold. “We won’t press charges. For now.”
The weight of those two final words settled on my shoulders like a cloak of stones. For now. A temporary reprieve, not absolution.
“But,” he continued, leaning forward slightly, “I’d strongly advise you to stay out of police matters in the future. Whatever… abilities… you may or may not have aren’t a license to conduct your own investigations.”
I met his gaze. “I didn’t choose to be involved in this. Mark chose me.”
The younger officer made a sound somewhere between a scoff and a cough. Johnson silenced him with a look before turning back to me.
“Mark Stevens is dead, Ms. Vega. The dead don’t choose anything.”
I thought of Grandpa and Mister B., of all the spirits who had guided me throughout my life. “You’re wrong,” I said softly, “but I understand why you believe that.”
The sergeant cleared his throat from the doorway, clearly uncomfortable with the direction of the conversation. “If you’re ready, Ms. Vega?”
I stood, gathering my worn leather bag and draping it across my body like armor. My legs felt unsteady after hours of sitting on the hard metal chair. The notebook in my hands seemed suddenly heavy, laden with secrets both spoken and unspoken.
“You’ll need to sign some paperwork,” the sergeant said, his voice neutral. “Standard procedure for release.”
I nodded, not trusting my voice. As I moved toward the door, Detective Johnson spoke again.
“Ms. Vega.”
I paused, not turning.
“How did you know?” His voice was quieter now, almost private. “About my mother. About the word.”
I looked back at him over my shoulder. His face had softened almost imperceptibly, the hard lines of skepticism blurred by something that might have been wonder or might have been fear.
“The dead speak,” I said simply. “Some of us just hear them better than others.”
I followed the sergeant out of the room before Johnson could respond. The hallway stretched before me, a sterile corridor of beige walls and speckled linoleum tiles. Officers moved through the space with purpose, their eyes sliding over me with varying degrees of curiosity. I wondered what stories had already spread about the tarot reader who had solved a murder case.
“This way,” the sergeant instructed, leading me toward a desk where a woman with tired eyes and hair pulled back so tightly it seemed to stretch her skin sat behind a computer.
“Processing release for Vega, Rahel,” the sergeant told her, then turned to me. “I need to return to my post. Officer Mendez will handle your paperwork and return your personal effects.”
He departed without another word, leaving me standing before the desk like a visitor in a foreign country without a phrasebook. Officer Mendez’s fingers clacked against her keyboard with mechanical efficiency.
“Sign here, here, and initial here,” she said, sliding a form toward me without looking up.
I scanned the document—standard language releasing the department from responsibility, acknowledging that I had not been mistreated during questioning, confirming that any personal items were being returned in the same condition they were received. My signature felt like a betrayal of some unspoken principle, but I signed anyway, the pen leaving thin, wavering lines on the carbon paper.
“Your items,” Officer Mendez said, pushing a plastic bin across the counter.
I examined the contents: my phone (battery dead), my wallet (contents untouched), my keys (three keys on a ring with a small crystal pendant), and a deck of tarot cards in a silk pouch (wet from the water John had spilled over the table at the cafe). Each object seemed both familiar and strange, as if they belonged to a version of me that no longer existed.
As I returned the items to my pockets and bag, I felt eyes on me. Looking up, I noticed two officers by the water cooler watching me with undisguised curiosity. One leaned to whisper something to the other, who nodded without taking his eyes off me. Word traveled fast in enclosed spaces.
“Is there anything else I need to do?” I asked Officer Mendez.
She shook her head. “You’re free to go. The exit is down that hallway and to the left.”
Free. The word echoed in my mind like a sound in an empty room. I wasn’t sure I remembered what freedom felt like after the weight of Mark’s death and John’s guilt had pressed upon me for so long.
I made my way down the indicated hallway, the fluorescent lights humming overhead like electric insects. The sound had burrowed into my skull during my hours of interrogation, and now it seemed to follow me, a persistent reminder of the night’s events.
My thoughts drifted to Sarah, Mark’s widow. I wondered if someone had called her, told her that her husband’s killer had been caught, that his body would finally receive a proper burial. I wondered if the news would bring her peace or simply reopen wounds that had begun to scab over.
The station was quieter now as midnight approached. The shift change had left the building in that liminal space between day and night operations. A lone janitor pushed a mop across the floor at the far end of the corridor, the wet streaks gleaming under the harsh lighting.
I passed a bulletin board covered with wanted posters and community notices, my eyes catching on a flyer for a missing child—a girl, seven years old, last seen three weeks ago. Her smile struck me like a physical blow. For a moment, I felt a coldness brush against my consciousness, a whisper too faint to understand. Then it was gone, leaving me unsure if it had been a message or simply my exhaustion playing tricks.
The exit loomed ahead, a heavy door marked by a glowing red sign. A final officer sat at a desk beside it, monitoring those entering and leaving. He looked up as I approached, his eyes lingering on my face as if trying to place me from a description he’d heard.
“Ms. Vega?” he asked, surprising me.
I nodded cautiously.
“Detective Johnson called down. You’re clear to leave.” He pressed a button beneath his desk, and the lock on the door clicked open. “Do you need us to call you a cab?”
I shook my head. “I’ll be fine.”
He looked skeptical but didn’t press the issue. “It’s late. Be careful out there.”
The warning carried more weight than he likely intended. Be careful. As if the dangers waiting outside were more significant than those I’d already faced. Perhaps they were.
I approached the door, placing my palm against its cool surface. Behind me lay a night of confessions and revelations, of truths dragged into the light. Ahead lay… what? A return to my life before Mark’s spirit had reached out to me? That seemed impossible now. My show was closed forever, turned into a pizzeria because this was more profitable for my landlord. The rent for my apartment had tripled. And some doors, once opened, could never be fully closed again.
The officer behind the desk cleared his throat gently, reminding me that I was still standing there, hand against the door, frozen in the moment between captivity and release. I pushed, feeling the weight of the door resist before yielding to my pressure.
Cool night air rushed in, carrying with it the distant sounds of the city—car horns, the rumble of the subway beneath the streets, fragments of laughter from late-night revelers. The scent of rain hung in the air, though the pavement was only slightly damp, as if the shower had been brief and reluctant.
I stepped across the threshold, the door swinging closed behind me with a final, decisive click of the lock re-engaging. The sound marked the end of one chapter and the beginning of another, a period placed firmly at the end of a sentence that had run on too long.
Standing on the precinct steps, I felt the weight of the night’s events settle into my bones. The city stretched before me, a landscape of shadows and artificial lights, of secrets buried and truths waiting to be uncovered. Somewhere in its depths, Sarah was receiving news of her husband’s killer. Somewhere, John sat in a cell contemplating the price of envy.
And here I stood, suspended between justice served and justice understood, between the world of the living and the whispers of the dead. Free, by legal definition. Bound, by something deeper and more permanent than any set of handcuffs.
I adjusted my bag strap, felt the reassuring weight of my tarot cards against my hip, and took my first step toward whatever waited next.
The rain fell in a half-hearted drizzle, more mist than proper downpour, coating my skin with a film of moisture that felt like the ghost of tears. I stood beneath the flickering streetlamp outside the police station, its yellowed light cutting through the darkness in stuttering pulses that matched the erratic beating of my heart. Freedom tasted metallic on my tongue, like blood or old pennies, and I breathed it in with cautious sips, afraid that too deep a draught might overwhelm me after hours in that sterile room.
New York at this hour was a different creature than its daytime self—less frantic, more prowling. Cars hissed past on the wet asphalt, their headlights drawing long streaks of illumination across the slick surface. Somewhere in the distance, a siren wailed and faded, like a lost soul finding its way home. The city breathed around me, exhaling steam from grates and manholes, inhaling the secrets whispered in dark corners.
I closed my eyes, letting the rain trace patterns on my upturned face. The weight of the past week pressed down on me—Mark’s body in that forgotten underground casino, Sarah’s eyes hollow with grief, John’s face as I revealed the truth of his crime through the spread of cards. All of it culminating in that interrogation room where I’d revealed more of myself than I had to anyone in years.
“Not your smartest move.”
I didn’t open my eyes. I didn’t need to. Mister B.’s voice was as familiar to me as my own heartbeat—gruff, perpetually unimpressed, undercut with a grudging affection he’d never admit to.
“Showing those cops what you can do,” he continued. “Might as well paint a target on your back.”
“They weren’t going to let me go otherwise,” I said quietly, finally opening my eyes to see him standing beside me.
Mister B. looked the same as always—broad-shouldered and handsome in an old-fashioned way, like a movie star from the ’40s who’d stepped off the screen into real life. His suit was immaculate, his eyes sharp as they sized me up. Only the faint translucence around his edges betrayed his true nature.
“You could’ve waited them out,” he argued. “They had nothing on you.”
“Except suspicion,” I countered. “And a dead body I led them to.”
Mister B. grunted, a sound that conveyed volumes of disagreement without requiring actual words.
“She did what she needed to do.” Grandpa’s voice drifted from my other side, gentle as always.
Unlike Mister B.’s crisp appearance, Grandpa manifested as I remembered him from life—weathered face lined with years of laughter, clothes that looked lived-in, comfortable, a perpetual slight stoop to his shoulders as if he were always leaning in to listen more carefully. His eyes held the same deep kindness they had when he’d taught me to read my first tarot spread.
“The path isn’t always straight,” he added, his smile like the memory of sunlight. “Sometimes we need to wander to find our way.”
“Wandering’s how people get lost,” Mister B. retorted, but there was no real heat in his words. This was an old argument between them, one I’d heard variations of many times before.
I felt the tension in my shoulders begin to ease, their familiar bickering more comforting than any platitude could have been. They had been with me since I was a child—Grandpa first, then Mister B. a few months later, their origins still something of a mystery to me. Later came Ma and Auntie. My guides, my teachers.
“They know what I can do now,” I said, watching a taxi splash through a puddle across the street. “The police.”
“Some of what you can do,” Grandpa corrected gently. “No one ever sees all of us, Rahel. Not even those we love most.”
“Those detectives will be watching you,” Mister B. said, his eyes narrowing as he looked back at the police station entrance. “Especially that Johnson. Man’s got the look of someone who doesn’t let go of puzzles easily.”
“I know.” I pushed wet hair back from my face, feeling the chill begin to seep through my clothes. “What are we going to do next?”
Mister B. turned to face me fully, his expression serious in a way that made him look more solid, more present than usual. “Time to find a new business model, now that your store is closed. And the money you won in the casino won’t pay the bills for long.”
I blinked at him, uncertain. “What do you mean?”
“He means,” Grandpa interjected, “that perhaps this experience has shown you a different way to use your gifts.”
“I’m a tarot reader,” I said, feeling a flutter of uncertainty. “That’s what I do.”
“That’s what you’ve been doing,” Mister B. corrected. “But this”—he gestured broadly, encompassing the police station, the city, the entire situation—”this is something else. Something more.”
I thought about the satisfaction I’d felt when John was caught, when Mark’s body was found and could be properly laid to rest. It had been different from the feeling I got after a successful reading, deeper somehow, more substantial.
“You think I should… what? Become some kind of psychic detective?” The idea sounded absurd spoken aloud, like something from a cable TV show.
Mister B. snorted. “God no. Those cops would eat you alive.” He adjusted his immaculate cuffs, a habit from his living days that carried into whatever existence he occupied now. “But there are other ways to help the dead find justice. Ways that don’t involve nearly getting yourself arrested.”
Grandpa placed a gentle, weathered hand on my shoulder. Though I couldn’t feel its physical weight, I sensed its warmth, a comfort that transcended the barrier between our worlds.
“You’ve moved on the path you’re meant to follow,” he said, his voice as soft as the rain around us. “This case, this man Mark—he came to you for a reason. Not just for his own justice, but to show you something about yourself.”
I closed my eyes again, remembering the moment in the abandoned casino when I’d first seen Mark’s body, the rush of vindication and grief and purpose all tangled together. “I helped him,” I whispered. “When no one else could.”
“Yes,” Grandpa agreed. “And there are others who need that same help. Other spirits who can’t rest, other stories that need endings.”
“But not tonight,” Mister B. cut in pragmatically. “Tonight you need sleep and probably a stiff drink. Spiritual revelations can wait until you’re dry and have something in your stomach.”
Despite everything, I laughed, the sound strange and rusty in the quiet street. “Always the practical one, Mister B.”
He gave me a rare smile, quick and gone like lightning. “Someone has to be. You and the old man would spend all day with your heads in the clouds otherwise.”
Grandpa chuckled, the sound like pages turning in a beloved book. “There are worse places for heads to be.”
I stood between them, these two spirits who had guided me through so much of my life, and felt something settle in my chest—a certainty that had been missing before. Mark had come to me for a reason, yes, but perhaps he had also been a messenger, pushing me toward a purpose I hadn’t recognized.
“I don’t know what comes next,” I admitted, watching the rain create halos around the streetlights.
“Nobody ever does,” Grandpa said. “That’s the beauty of it.”
“And the terror,” Mister B. added, but without his usual cynicism.
I adjusted my jacket, feeling the weight of my tarot cards in the pocket. They had been my tools, my connection to a world most couldn’t see. But maybe they were just one way to bridge that gap, not the only way.
The rain had begun to let up, the drizzle thinning to occasional drops that pattered against the pavement like hesitant footsteps. The city seemed to exhale around me, buildings emerging more clearly from the mist, lights sharper against the darkness.
“You’ll figure it out,” Mister B. said, his form beginning to fade slightly as the rain diminished. “You always do.”
“We’re with you,” Grandpa added, his presence also growing fainter, though his smile remained clear. “Whatever path you choose.”
I glanced back at the police station, its windows gleaming with artificial light, then out at the city stretching before me, a landscape of possibilities both seen and unseen. Mark’s case was closed, his killer caught, his body found. But in solving his murder, I’d opened something else—a door within myself that I wasn’t sure could be closed again.
“I know,” I said to my fading companions, their forms now little more than suggestions in the clearing night. “You always are.”
I stepped away from the shelter of the streetlamp, feeling the last of the rain against my skin. Each drop felt like a baptism of sorts, washing away the interrogation room, the fear, the uncertainty. Leaving behind something cleaner, clearer, more purposeful.
The dead would always speak. Some of us would always listen. But perhaps, I thought as I walked into the night, there were different conversations to be had, different questions to ask, different ways to bring peace to those caught between worlds.
I didn’t look back at the police station. Whatever waited there—suspicion, interest, future complications—would still be there tomorrow. Tonight was for moving forward, for listening to the whispers that had guided me here and would guide me onward.
The city enfolded me in its arms of concrete and steel and countless stories, both finished and unfolding. Somewhere in its depths, a spirit might be waiting, searching for someone who could hear their final request, their unfinished business, their plea for justice or peace or simple remembrance.
Tomorrow, I would begin to listen for them. Tonight, I walked home through streets washed clean by rain, following a path that had always been there, waiting for me to find it.
Behind me, the last traces of Grandpa and Mister B. dissolved into the night, their guidance delivered, their presence a promise that would return when needed. Ahead lay uncertainty, purpose, and the knowledge that some gifts, once recognized, could never be denied again.
I adjusted my jacket one last time and stepped fully into the night, leaving the flickering streetlamp and all it illuminated behind.
– The End –
